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Westford reaches $8.5M asphalt-plant settlement

By Chris Lisinski, clisinski@lowellsun.com

Updated:
10/05/2016 01:19:01 PM EDT

Rick DeFelice, president of Newport Materials, at the site on Groton Road in Westford of the proposed asphalt plant. Newport and the town have reached a settlement by which it can open the plant. SUN file photo

WESTFORD -- The town and manufacturing company Newport Materials have reached a settlement after a six-year legal battle that will allow an asphalt plant to open on Groton Road.

As part of the mediated agreement, the plant must meet specific conditions for operating under a special permit and the company must provide $8.5 million of benefits to the town, including complete reimbursement of the town's legal expenses and repaving of 30 tennis and basketball courts.

The settlement agreement was announced in a Tuesday press release from the Town Manager's Office and final paperwork will be filed with the state Land Court today. It comes as a resolution to an appeal by the company's CEO filed in the state Land Court.

Board of Selectmen Chairman Kelly Ross said the agreement was "an extremely difficult decision" and not an ideal result, but the selectmen and Planning Board felt the compromise was best since it still places some restrictions on the plant.

"Ideally, there wouldn't have been an asphalt plant at all," he said. "It seemed like there was a large risk to the town and to the residents if we were unsuccessful with the appeal. Rather than take that risk and end up with a really unpalatable situation, it seemed like this was the more prudent way to go."

Newport Materials CEO and President Richard DeFelice could not be reached for comment Tuesday.

Newport Materials will be allowed to open its proposed plant on Groton Road next to Fletcher's Quarry as it had wanted for years.

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The permit has about 100 conditions of approval, though those were not specified in the press release, and Newport will be required to pay for technical consultants to monitor traffic and other conditions of approval. No more than 200 vehicles will be permitted on the property per day.

The company will also offer numerous benefits to the town as "mitigation": It will repay the $550,000 the town spent on legal fees, provide a $200,000 neighborhood mitigation fund, purchase a new SUV for the Westford Police Department, pave 20 miles of roadways and 10 miles of sidewalks, repave 30 basketball and tennis courts and give the town's Highway Department 300 tons of asphalt for 20 years.

The Board of Selectmen and Planning Board will discuss the settlement at a public meeting at 7 p.m. on Oct. 12 in the Stony Brook School Auditorium.

"There are a great many residents who care very much about this," Ross said. "We want to be able to explain to them why we did what we did and we want to give them the opportunity to ask any questions."

DeFelice first applied in 2009 to build an asphalt-manufacturing plant on his company's 115-acre property. The land had been used for recycling materials such as brick and concrete, and DeFelice believed that his plan would have been permitted as "light manufacturing" under the parcel's industrial zoning.

But in April 2010, the Planning Board denied a special permit for the site because it did not see asphalt as "light manufacturing," kicking off a lengthy legal battle. Newport Materials appealed the decision in the state's Land Court and initially offered a $5 million settlement to the town in 2011, but that was turned down.

Some residents who lived nearby formed the Route 40 Clean Air Coalition in opposition to the project, citing concerns over the plant's effects on noise and air quality.

In 2014, Judge Alexander Sands ruled that the board was correct in denying the permit, but said if four specific issues with the proposal were fixed, DeFelice's plans could be allowed. His decision remanded the matter back to the town.

The Planning Board again denied the special permit, and DeFelice appealed the decision with the Land Court in April 2015.

The settlement came during that appeal process. Ross said town officials were concerned that if they lost the appeal -- or if DeFelice decided to use the property for another permitted use -- then nearby residents would have to endure more traffic than the settlement permits.

"Something we were hearing from residents was that the truck traffic was a major, major concern, so this allowed us to get some limitations on it," Ross said. "By having the uses limited and the truck trips limited, we thought that would be a better result for the residents than what might happen otherwise."

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